I use a MOXF8 for live stage performance and have recently been invited to play in a show that is on the other side of the continent - I am in Vancouver, BC and the show is near Washington DC. Obviously I would like to avoid travelling with my keyboard due to its size and weight, but it seems that none of the local instrument rental services offer a MOXF8.

I have been offered a Motif XF8 as a replacement, but my setup uses some bespoke MIDI software (created in Max/MSP) which I don’t believe will work with any other keyboard than the MOXF8 - at least not without having to do a lot of reprogramming without actually being able to test the program. I was also hoping to just be able to hook up via USB and download all my voices/performances to a rental MOXF8 using the John Melas MOXF Librarian software.

Does anyone have any suggestions? Are the MOXF8 and Motif XF8 similar enough that I could make my setup work with a little tweaking, or am I out of luck? Or does anyone know of a place in that area that rents out MOXF8s?

As you may be aware, the MOXF is compatible with XF files to a degree. XF Voices, Performances, Arps, Waveforms, and Mix Templates will directly transfer, but not Masters or sequencer data (Patterns/Songs).

Unfortunately, there’s no such direct compatibility going the other way, so Melas software would be required. In addition, some Arps from the MOXF aren’t available in the XF. If your MOXF has a flash module and you’re using Waveforms stored on it, things get even more complicated.

Furthermore, any SysEx messages being used in your Max/MSP programming will be problematic. While much of the MOXF and XF SysEx is similar, at a minimum the ID bytes in the headers would have to be changed. Other bytes might need to be edited, and in some cases the messages won’t work at all. Indeed, without an XF to verify beforehand that things worked correctly, such editing would seem risky.

It doesn’t seem like a lot of “fun”, but if you have the time, one possibility might be to rent an XF in Vancouver, get things working correctly with it, and save the necessary files to take to DC.